subject: Interviewing People With Mental Disabilities [print this page] This week, I was asked to "quality control" an interview conducted by a police detective who had secured a "confession" from a suspect.
The attorney who retained me said that his client was Developmentally Delayed, had been in Special Education classes throughout school and could barely function independently in society.
He had been accused of stealing a wallet and supposedly had confessed. The client's parents (who still function as his guardians) didn't believe he committed the crime and were suspicious of the confession.
The bizarre part of this case is the fact that the elements of the crime were met by the prosecution: all that is except for intent. The suspect had been caught leaving a Men's restroom at a department store clutching another man's wallet. Store security watched as the suspect left the store, still with wallet in hand. He was apprehended in the parking lot and the police were called.
I got suspicious of the confession when the state didn't want to turn the recording over during discovery. The attorney finally got a copy of the recorded interview.
I found a lot of things that concerned me and, to his credit, the police detective that had conducted the interview met with me and was open to my suggestions.
Here's what I found (see if you have done these things):
* The interview was over an hour in length. This is normally not a problem in itself, but about every 7 minutes, the suspect (DD client) asked the detective if he could leave. Each time the detective said "let's talk about one other thing first."
* The suspect asked if his parents could come in to be with him during the interview. The detective responded that the suspect was an adult (he is 27) and his parents couldn't come in.
* Repeatedly, the suspect told the detective that he found the victim's wallet on the sink and was bringing it home to give to his Mom "because she knows what to do about stuff like that."
* When asked if he stole the wallet, the client said "No, that would be wrong to steal."
* The investigator asked the suspect if he had stolen the wallet, would he have paid the man back for what he lost. The suspect said "sure I would, that would be the right thing." The detective wrote in his report that the suspect agreed to repay the victim for his loss.
Okay, it's easy to criticize other people's work and I didn't share this story for that purpose. I wrote it to remind all of us that we are dealing with people, not "victims" "suspects" and "witnesses." It's easy to look for the elements of a crime and just do enough work to satisfy those elements, make the arrest and go on to the next case.
In this case, let's talk about what I think is wrong (you may not agree with me):
1. When you are interviewing a mentally challenged suspect who has legal guardians, these people are classified as vulnerable adults and, as such, have special protections afforded them by society.
2. At the very least, treat vulnerable adults as juveniles, with all juvenile rights. In other words, if you tell a vulnerable adult that they can't leave during an interview - in their mind they are now under arrest.
3. A request from a vulnerable adult to have their guardian present should be honored, if you ever hope to get that "confession" admitted into court.
4. Remember, picking up a wallet is not a crime; stealing a wallet is a crime. What differentiates picking something up from stealing is the intent to permanently deprive the owner of the property.
5. Intent is rarely observed: it is inferred. That is, we can look at someone's actions and infer the intent. Sometimes we are wrong. In this case, if a "normal" person picked up a wallet and walked out of a store with it, I would reasonably assume that a theft was in progress. But in this case, with this suspect, is it possible he was telling the truth?
6. In this case, would it have been prudent to contact the suspect's mother and see if he has done this before? In fact, throughout his whole life the suspect has been bringing his mother stuff he finds.
7. Asking rhetorical questions or theoretical scenarios is not applicable when dealing with developmentally delayed individuals. Asking this suspect if he would repay a victim if he stole the wallet is not the same as asking me that question. I would immediately say to my questioner "Who cares? I didn't steal it" or words to that effect. I thought it was not professional to write in the police report that the suspect agreed to repay the victim. He said no such thing.
8. One last thing: at no point in the report did it mention the suspect's obvious mental disabilities. So, an overworked prosecutor who was scanning the case for arraignments saw a "slam dunk" set of case facts and approved the charges.
I'm happy to say that justice was done in this case. When we showed the prosecutor all of the above problems, he immediately dismissed all charges.
